Actually, private grocery stores can be required to accept food stamps (or whatever the Texas version is called.)

Of course, this is “customer turns in food stamp and the store is reimbursed by the state, and the food stamps are only good for certain things, and there’s a limited number each customer can use in a month.”

If food stamps worked like health insurance, then any random person could walk into a store, take as much as they liked of anything they wanted (including beer and cigarettes), waltz out the door yelling “I’m poor, can’t pay”, and the store would get ten cents on the dollar from the state if they got anything at all.

“Humans have gone from existing solely in Africa to inhabiting every continent on Earth [1]. More recently, humans have begun cultivating specialized food-crop, domesticating animals, and living in towns and cities. Such environmental changes are known to alter common genetic variation via the positive selection of advantageous mutations [2]. As many populations were exposed to new food sources, diseases, and cultural lifestyles, positive selection likely played a major role in shaping the genetic architecture. A positive selection event represents a net gain of fitness, and there is room for the simultaneous selection of harmful mutations if they are linked to a relatively strongly beneficial mutation [3]. This can occur when a locus is in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with a beneficial mutation. Alternatively, the beneficial mutation may simultaneously harbor a harmful component [4]. Positive selection may occur as long as the benefits outweigh the harm. Therefore, increased susceptibility to disease may accompany a fitness-increasing mutation introduced by positive selection.

Complex diseases contain many distinct associations across the human genome that contribute only slightly to the absolute risk of disease [5]. These disease-associated mutations may undergo positive selection if they are simultaneously associated with relatively strongly beneficial traits. For example, the sickle cell mutation in the Hemoglobin-B (HBB) gene was found to be the target of positive selection due to its properties related to malaria resistance, despite its simultaneous role in introducing sickle cell disease [3]. It has also been recently shown that the variants in the antiviral response gene IFIH1 associated with protection against enterovirus infection simultaneously increase susceptibility to Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) [6]. In this case, the benefits of having variants of the IFIH1 gene that increase susceptibility to T1D depend on the prevalence of enterovirus infection. Having IFIH1 gene variants increasing susceptibility to T1D may be considered advantageous and undergo positive selection if the probability of being exposed to the virus were high.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) can be detected in human skeletal remains, and likely originated from the Americas and spread to Europe after the pre-Columbian era ended, possibly by a microorganism or allergen that is a necessary trigger for the disease [7]. This paves the way for selection to proceed strongly for potential benefits associated with the genetic-basis of RA. Prior to exposure to microorganisms or allergens required for the onset of RA, there would be no disadvantage to having mutations associated with RA in European populations. Ultimately, the cumulative contribution of such mutations with low effect sizes may play a large role in causing the disease.

It is currently unknown how much of the genetic-basis of complex disease originates from genetic mutations driven to prevalence by positive selection pressures. Blekhman et al. demonstrated that coding positions within disease associated genes underlying a number of complex human diseases are more rapidly evolving than coding regions of genes not associated with disease [8]. This suggests that evolutionary changes and natural selection may play a role in regions associated with complex disease.”

To read more, see the full paper at this link:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012236

Are you sure you are taking your meds?

Even doctors are sheep.

The initial idea was to remove UTMB from Galveston. For various reasons, some legal and some political, it was decided to rebuild in Galveston.

Little of the property loss was covered by insurance. Facilities have been slowly reopened, but much remains to be done.

UTMB has received massive funding over the years from Galveston based charities (not so much from the city itself). Facilities built with some of these dontated funds were to specifically serve the needs of Galveston residents.

Facilities and services built up over the last 120 years are now being rebuilt. There is an understandable problem now with determine priorities for rebuilding and restoring programs. One major issue is: should the programs originally funded by local donations be restored before teaching/research programs that had other funding sorces?

These issues are so large they make the ED funding almost a moot point.

UTMP is at least $250,000,000 short of funds needeed to completely restore all facilities to pre-Ike levels.

Obviously, any comparison with pre-Ike level of service have no real meaning.

Glen in Texas

I had the BEST doctor ever when we lived in another state. She said she didn’t get them ever. So as the only MD reaching out to a rural area a couple times a month, it would be better to not have a doctor for that area at all?

I think it’s a little crazy.

My only concern at the ED is getting appropriate treatment. Midlevel providers can treat the basic stuff fine….I only want an MD if there is some fancy diagnosing needed.